When the Data hits the Fan!

Book of the Dead of the Priest of Horus, Imhotep (Imuthes), ca. 332–200 B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/551786 The recent final reports for the Academic Book of the Future are a revealing, well balanced account of the current and future state of scholarly monograph publishing in the UK. One feature is the close attention given to Open Access in books ( pages 175-195 in Michael Jubb's report ) . In this blog I want to unpack the consequences of Book Processing Charges in a Gold OA environment and how they would be utterly unsustainable in a future OA mandated REF environment.

The importance of books is clear for the Arts and Humanities in the UK as indicated by approximately ¼ of all submissions to the REF in book form and in addition book chapters remain an important factor in submission. These heatmap visualisations for the Academic Book of the Future quickly illustrates the stark differences in forms of scholarly communication across UK HE.

February is a month of discovery. Not just of gravitational waves but for increased evidence for Open Access, for the costs of publishing monographs and for academic journal markets. This blog focuses on the highlights of Professor Adam Tickell’s  OA report to Jo Johnson (Minister of State for Universities and Science) that has been published today, with the Minister’s response . It also mentions the Costs of Publishing Monographs report from Ithaka and the Academic journal markets report from SCONUL, RLUK, ARMA and Jisc.